South Africa: WIOCC Completes 2Africa Undersea Cable Landing at OADC Facility in Durban, South Africa

WIOCC has successfully connected the 2Africa cable to the Open Access Data Centres (OADC) Durban facility in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In April 2022, OADC's 4MW, 43,050 sq ft facility in the Amanzimtoti neighborhood of Durban debuted with 21,525 sq ft of white space. The 2Africa cable was announced in 2020 by Meta, China Mobile International, Telecom Egypt, MTN GlobalConnect, STC, Orange, Vodafone, and the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC). It is the world's longest undersea cable at 28,000 miles, and if completed, it will connect 33 places at 46 locations in Africa, Europe, and Asia. Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) is in charge of building and delivering the 180 Kbps cable, which is expected to be completed in 2024. 

This will be the fourth and last South African cable landing location. MTN stated in December that the 2Africa cable has landed at its Yzerfontein and Duynefontein cable landing stations (CLS) in South Africa. Both places are north of Cape Town on the western coast of South Africa. Vodacom installed the eastern section of the cable at a network facility in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, last month. 

2Africa's cable just arrived in Barcelona at the new CLS of AFR-IX Telecom. It has also just landed in Ras Ghareb, Egypt, in conjunction with Telecom Egypt, which has stated that a second landing site would be established in Port Said, which is located in the Mediterranean Sea, in the coming months. At the past, it has also touched down in Genoa, Italy, and Djibouti City, Djibouti. The 2Africa Pearls expansion for the Middle East and Asia will land at Airtel's CLS in Mumbai, India.